Sunday, August 9, 2009

Hip Hop Once Saved My Life

Dear Children of Today,

You might hear some of us older (25 years+) fans of the rap genre clamoring for the days of yore as it pertains this creative outlet of artistic expression. Names like Gangstarr, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and even the Wu-Tang Clan likely mean little to you. If you are reading this, you probably want to know what it was really like. Well kids, this was hip-hop as we all knew it:



If this music video teaches us anything its:

1) You can walk into a complete stranger's house and "rap" your way out of a breaking and entering.
2) Other than the obviously necessary bling and fly kicks, you can "flow" your way into taking whatever you want.
3) DO NOT include your ulterior motives in your rhymes.
4) Have fun!

Make sense? Long story short, my great grandparents might not have been too keen on Elvis' "crazy" (at the time) dance moves, my grandparents probably didn't "get" The Doors, my dad doesn't see the skill in rapping spoken word over a sample and I don't enjoy the new music with the auto-tuner in every song (although I feel my generational gap of good music has ended way too early). Every generation, by and large, dislikes the current trend and clamors back to the old days. Unfortunately, I have to come to grips with this at the age of 26. Can't music just be yabba-dabba delicous forever?

-JF

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